TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Grazing Snails Consume 70% of Sea Plant Life

One thing that is poorly understood about the sea is that the actual
variation in oceanic ecosystem throughout the globe is rather small.
If the surface temperature is too warm, one merely sinks lower. Thus
vegetation is generally universal as are their consumers. That is
why Alaska is as rich as the Great Barrier Reef contrary to our
common sense expectations and why now we are discovering the true
richness of the Arctic seas.

Here we discover that small snails, too small to be interesting to us
as food, just like zebra mussels, are the main herbivore to an extent
unimagined.

An obvious corollary of all this is that it behooves us to
investigate the possibilities of producing a larger version for
possible human consumption itself. The sheer productivity calls for
this.

It has been hard to determine the real effect of the zebra mussel on
the Great lakes but it has cleaned up the water at the least. Birds
have also learned to feed on them and other water life is figuring it
out. The most interesting has been the crayfish which may be the
easiest way to bring it into the human food system.

Grazing snails rule
the waves

by Staff Writers

Sydney, Australia
(SPX) Jun 07, 2012

The study team
analysed results from over 600 experiments, conducted over the past
40 years across the planet, where ecologists have experimentally
removed herbivores to understand their importance in structuring
marine habitats.

Coral reefs and
seashores largely look the way they do because large fish and urchins
eat most of the seaweed that might otherwise cover them, but a major
new study has found that the greatest impact of all comes from an
unexpected quarter - small marine snails.

The
study published in the journal Ecology Letters is the largest of its
kind ever undertaken into the ecological impacts of marine grazing
animals: it was led by Associate Professor Alistair Poore, of the
UNSW Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, who worked with an
international team of 10 researchers.

It
found that, on average, marine herbivores remove almost 70% of the
plant material growing on the sea floor - an effect far greater than
grazing animals have on land plants.

"We found that
across the globe marine herbivores profoundly reduce the abundance of
marine plants, with the strongest effects in rocky seashores,"
says Poore.

"Icons like the
Great Barrier Reef would look very different otherwise: the corals
and rocks are usually free of seaweed, but that's only because
animals eat all the plants as soon as they grow.

"Big animals such
as fish and urchins have major impacts on reefs and kelp forests but
what may surprise many people is that we found that the strongest
impacts of all were snails controlling seaweeds on rocky shores."

The study team
analysed results from over 600 experiments, conducted over the past
40 years across the planet, where ecologists have experimentally
removed herbivores to understand their importance in structuring
marine habitats.

Manipulating animals
in their natural habitats is the most powerful technique to
understand how ecological interactions work, they note.

"When these
grazing animals are removed, the seaweeds quickly start to dominate,"
notes Poore. "One of the exercises we give our students to
illustrate this is to visit a rocky shore at Sydney's Maroubra Beach
and remove all the snails from a selected area. When we return a few
weeks later, the rocks are covered in green seaweed."

Of particular interest
to ecologists is the team's finding that the global data set rejects
the long-standing idea that herbivores in the sea and on land have
stronger impacts on plants in the tropics.

"For decades,
ecologists have believed that biological interactions like predation
or herbivory are more intense in the tropics compared to temperate
areas," says Poore.

"But we found no
evidence of stronger herbivory close to the equator, nor increased
herbivore impacts with increased temperature. Despite expectations,
grazing on coral reefs did not have larger impacts than in several
other marine habitats."

The study also found
that in some ways, marine plants are winning the long evolutionary
battle with their herbivores. Some groups of seaweeds and seagrasses
can avoid herbivore damage with the help of chemical or physical
defences or because they are poor quality food.

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18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.